TEENAGERS LATEST NEWS: KIDS BEHAVING BETTER

The latest news about smoking, drinking and the use of illegal drugs
among teenagers is actually good news. Perhaps that's why it got so
little attention.

The highly reputable annual survey conducted by the University of
Michigan's Institute for Social Research, released Monday, should have
received sustained civic applause for what it showed:

The use of tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs fell simultaneously
among eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders for the first time since the
Monitoring the Future project began tracking teenage substance abuse
in 1975. Even the use of Ecstasy declined after several years of
surging popularity.

The truth can't be avoided. American teens are no longer Young Men
(and Women) Behaving Badly.

Add those facts to a few other remarkable trends in national teen
culture. Teen birthrates, which began dropping in the late 1980s, are
continuing to plummet. The teen abortion rate is also dropping. And
the number of high-school students who say they've never had sexual
intercourse rose by almost 10 percent between 1991 and 2001.

This is not supposed to happen in the age of Britney, Eminem and
Columbine. Teenagers are supposed to be sullen, promiscuous, alienated
- - or a combination of all three.

In "The Rise & Fall of the American Teenager," Thomas Hine writes:
"The mere presence of teenagers threatens us ... and the degree to
which adults fear them as a group has unquestionably increased.

"The result has been the enactment of laws that deny them, as minors,
freedom to move, gather and express themselves and of other laws that
require states to prosecute them as adults for a wide variety of crimes."

Why this yawning disconnect? Partly because today's teenagers spend
less time in the company of parents and other adults. They're living
on Mars while Mom and Dad are on Pluto, and everyone's just too busy
and stressed to figure out how to occupy the same planet, let alone
communicate in the same language.

Besides, it's much easier to demonize the kid with the spiky purple
hair than to try to understand him.

The latest avalanche of unexpectedly good news can't be traced to a
single magic factor, but scientific studies do point to one thing:
Teenagers will change their behaviors when they perceive the risk of
continuing is too steep.

That, researchers believe, is what propelled the stunning and welcome
decrease in cigarette smoking.

Even the percentage of teens who prefer to date nonsmokers is
increasing.

Other recent surveys have shown that teens disapprove of casual sex
more than they did a decade ago - an attitude adjustment propelled by
fear of AIDS and sexually transmitted disease, but also by public
exhortations toward abstinence, privacy and restraint.

"It signals a deep, broad and profound change," says Sarah Brown,
director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "We
should give a celebration party for all teens in America to say,
'You're doing the right thing, so don't stop!'"

We should celebrate these achievements - and then, after the party is
over, concentrate on a little attitude-adjustment of our own.